Fort Stanton; Lincoln County; Fort Stanton, Lincoln County National Register of Historic Places, SRCP #60 Statehood period of significance: c.1855-1912 Associated themes: Military; Federal Government; American Indian; Civil War Remotely situated in a small valley along the swift Rio Bonito in Lincoln County, Fort Stanton was established in…
Chaves County Courthouse; National Register of Historic Places, SRCP #1019 Statehood period of significance: 1911-1912 Built as a replacement courthouse, the 1911 Chaves County Courthouse, designed by Isaac Hamilton Rapp in the progressive Beaux-Arts style, signaled the ambitions of this new county and its presumed place in statehood. The…
Treaty-Making, Treaty-Breaking, and Reciprocal Captive-Taking in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands (1848-1853) By Robert Castro It must have been a curious thing for Americans to witness mixed blood nations make war on each other through the reciprocal taking of captive persons.* On November 20th, 1851 Col. E.V. Sumner, 9th Dept. Fort…
by Traci Brynne Voyles Beginning in the 1930s with the Navajo Soil Erosion Control Project, Navajo land and people became the subjects of intense federal scrutiny; in subsequent decades, this project and others such as those run under the Defense Minerals Procurement Agency and the Atomic Energy Commission catalyzed…
4 22 1891 by Michael Ann Sullivan Laura Gilpin grew up in the West and always considered herself a Westerner. She said of herself, “I am definitely a westerner and I just have to be in the mountain country. It’s where I belong.” She was born on 22 April…
1 10 1888 First Lady of American Letters By Michael Ann Sullivan Erna Fergusson was born on 10 January 1888 to a prominent Albuquerque family. Her mother was Clara Mary Huning, the daughter of the successful merchant Franz Huning. Franz had emigrated to New Mexico from Germany in 1849….
Pogroms in the Spanish realms in the 1390s were an attempt at eradicating Judaism from Spain’s kingdoms, and also a massive move toward the conversion and assimilation of the Sephardim, or Jews of Spain. Still, resentment turned to outright persecution by the middle of the 15th century, when the…
Mt. Chalchihuitl is the largest known prehistoric turquoise mine in North America, with turquoise artifacts found from the site dating from around 1000 AD. Native miners excavated thousands of tons of waste rock at Mt. Chalchihuitl before Spanish invasion in the 16th century. Archeologists have recovered cultural materials at…
New Mexico's Anglo Protestant women were late to organize influential women's clubs, which were not started until the 1890s. However, this movement left out large sectors of women in the state who were of Indian or Mexican American ancestry. The Catholic Church, openly opposed to women's suffrage in the…
By Rick Hendricks In The El Paso Salt War of 1877, C.L. Sonnichsen, described what he called the Salt Ring as being made up of W.W. Mills, A.J. Fountain, Louis Cardis, and Father Antonio Borrajo, the parish priest of San Elizario, Texas. Sonnichsen went on to describe Father Borrajo…
